About the book: Mary's maternal tenderness for each believer (then and now) is apparent at every moment in this little gem of a book.
The "thorns" or sorrows of the Blessed Mother are an expression of this tenderness. She invites us to receive the "roses" for our consolation and surrender, keeping the "thorns" for herself, so that we might discover her motherly love and might keep her company as she reflects on her separation from Jesus following the Ascension.
Conchita has Mary say, "The sorrows were all for me, but the precious fruit derived from them - for you."
As you read this book, you feel invited to live in union with Mary, so that, with her help and by her example, you can better grasp the love and sentiments of the Lord.
Roses and Thorns will be a classic Marian devotion, as The True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin of St Louis Grignon de Montfort and The Glories of Mary of St Alphonsus Maria Ligouri already are. - Msgr Juan Esquerda Bifet, Professor, Urbaniana Pontifical University, Rome, Italy.
Roses and Thorns (2007, 2023) is revised by Mary McCandless (Sr Dolores Icaza, RCSCJ) and edited by Ron Leonardo.
About the author: Blessed Concepción Cabrera de Armida, better known as Conchita, was born in San Luis Potosi on 8 December 1862 and died in Mexico, DF, on 3 March 1937.
As a writer, she often aimed to show her readers how to love the Catholic Church:
"To love the Church is not to criticize her, not to destroy her, not to try to change her essential structures, not to reduce her to humanism, horizontalism and to the simple service of a human liberation. To love the Church is to cooperate with the work of Redemption by the Cross and in this way obtain the grace of the Holy Spirit come to renew the face of this poor earth, conducting it to its consummation in the design of the Father's immense love."
Wife, mother, widow, lay apostle, Catholic mystic and writer, Conchita was beatified in Mexico City on 4 May 2019 as the first Mexican laywoman to receive this recognition.
Along with the present work, St Pauls has also published Holy Hours (2006); Seasons of the Soul (2005); A Mother's Letters (2004); and I Am: Eucharistic Meditations on the Gospel (2001). Other works inspired by her and also published by St Pauls include Conchita by M M Philipon OP (1978) and Irresistibly Drawn to the Eucharist edited by Juan Gutierrez Gonzalez, MSpS (2002).
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